Thanks for the memories

Alex Massie says that sports memorabilia is on a roll

As was so often the case, P.G. Wodehouse reached deep into the heart of the matter: collecting sporting memorabilia requires dedication, a willingness to speculate, a tolerance of risk and, too often, a certain amount of the ‘iron in the soul’ that equips a man to survive uxorial disapproval.

Readers will recall the sorry tale, related in ‘High Stakes’, of how the American millionaires Bradbury Fisher and Gladstone Bott risked butlers, railroads and their wives’ wrath to secure ownership of ‘the authentic baffy used by Bobby Jones in his first important contest — the Infants’ All-In Championship of Atlanta, Georgia, open to those of both sexes not yet having finished teething’.

Wodehouse was right, however: the novice collector is well advised to buy early and hold. A football shirt worn at youth level by a star such as Wayne Rooney could have increased its value tenfold by now. Budding collectors should ‘recognise an up-and-coming player like a Rooney or a Gareth Bale and search for shirts and trophies they won at under-16 level or even earlier’, says David Convery, who headed Christie’s sports memorabilia business before setting up his own house last year.

When Christie’s held its first dedicated sports memorabilia auction in 1989, 300 lots sold for a combined £50,000. ‘That wasn’t a bad effort,’ says Convery, who organised the sale. By 2005, the value of Christie’s sporting business had increased to £3 million.

‘The economy goes up and down, but the memorabilia business goes on,’ says Graham Budd, Sotheby’s memorabilia consultant, who also has his own auction house. ‘It’s not bomb-proof but it’s pretty secure.’ Just as football has assumed an ever larger share of the media’s attention, so it has steadily become the single most important sector of the memorabilia market. Not coincidentally, the advent of the Premiership and the consequent influx of television money and foreign players dramatically expanded the market for all manner of footballing paraphernalia as the consequences of the English game’s growing popularity filtered through the economy.

These have been boom times for collectors. The extraordinary interest in English football in the Far East has created an entire new market for football memorabilia, while also providing opportunities for domestic collectors to burnish their collections with rarities of a sort their grandfathers could scarcely have even dreamt of. For Manchester United collectors, for instance, a programme from a pre-season friendly in Beijing could prove more valuable than one from yet another FA Cup final.

This year’s FA Cup promises rich pickings for collectors, if only because none of the four sides remaining in the competition has enjoyed much success. ‘Barnsley last won the trophy in 1912, Cardiff in 1927. It’s very unlikely either will do so again. The players’ shirts and medals could easily be worth £10,000 immediately,’ says Convery. ‘Football is different from other markets because you can sell modern items very quickly.’ As you might expect, Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have the greatest number of avid collectors. But building up a programme collection for smaller clubs can pay dividends too. ‘Every club has its fanatics. They may be a smaller collection of souls but they’re just as devoted,’ says Budd.

Even runners-up medals can have value. The medals won by Gretna players as a result of their improbable run to the Scottish Cup final in 2006 are already worth as much as £2,500 — a useful bonus for players at a club that went into administration this month.

Supporters going to Wembley for this year’s FA Cup final should ‘buy an extra programme and keep their ticket stubs’, says Convery. The fact that the final will be the first to be played at the newly rebuilt stadium may also increase the future value of memorabilia associated with the game.

Football may be the biggest market, but it’s scarcely the only one. Golf and cricket remain hardy perennials, while the demand for rugby union memorabilia has also increased in recent years, prompted by England’s triumph in the 2003 World Cup. Despite that, ‘it’s the historic material that has value: shirts, boots, caps, programmes from the pre-war era,’ says Budd, though items from the great Barry John and Phil Bennett-inspired Welsh sides of the 1970s have also seen their value rise.

Similarly, golf collectors are comparatively uninterested in Tiger Woods or Nick Faldo, preferring to concentrate their firepower on material from Harry Vardon’s turn-ofthe-century era and before. Though Mungo Park’s 1874 Open Championship medal sold for £48,000 recently, the still-stagnant Japanese economy has meant that the golf market has remained comparatively flat.

Like golf, cricket and collecting have been paired together as surely as the spin twins — Jim Laker and Tony Lock — once were. A complete set of Iisden sold for a record £120,000 last year and individual volumes of the Almanack can be worth more than £5,000.

Estimates for other more modern memorabilia vary but the bat Tim Ambrose — England’s latest wicket-keeper — used a fortnight ago to score a century in only his third innings in Test cricket could be worth between £500 and £1,000 right now. ‘It could be a good investment. If he goes on to be a Test regular and builds up his reputation the value will increase,’ says Convery.

By contrast, the bat Kevin Pietersen used to hit his Ashes-sealing century at the Oval in 2005 is valued at around £5,000 and could conceivably reach as much as £20,000 at auction if two avid collectors proved equally determined to secure its ownership.

Though footballers and cricketers have taken to selling off their memorabilia collections, some of the grandest prizes remain unclaimed. Pelé’s collection, for instance, has never been put up for auction; meanwhile, though the rest of his collection has been sold, the iconic red shirt Bobby Moore wore when he lifted the World Cup in 1966 has never been found.

‘There are lots of stories about where it is,’ says Convery. ‘It’s supposed to be hanging in various East End pubs or in any one of a dozen other places. But somewhere there’s probably a bin bag containing a very valuable red shirt.’ Valuable, that is, to the tune of perhaps £200,000. High stakes indeed.